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IBM Announces a Brain for Cities

I can’t recall how many times I’ve said something along the lines of, “I don’t know all the ways this will eventually be used, but it seems like the right approach.”When Lou Gerstner made the decision to keep IBM together in the early ‘90s, he probably wasn’t quite so flippant in his decision making, but I imagine that there were elements of that reasoning.He saw value in a company that was able to solve large, complex challenges that feature products, services and expertise from all corners of the business.IBM was then, and is today (more so than ever before), a company capable of taking on big things.

We use the word “smarter” a lot these days and I promise it’s about more than patting ourselves on the back for our newest work.In a lot of cases we’re talking about a dramatically different approach to whatever it is that we’re calling “smarter.”This Monday we announced a brain for our Smarter Cities initiative and we’ve named it the IBM Intelligent Operations Center.With this announcement, we are taking a more centralized approached to city management, which is a task that brings in more than a few products and services from around the company.

I feel like a broken record talking about convergence because I’ve been writing about endpoint management so much recently, but this is another area where we’re seeing real value being derived from not looking at specific technologies in operational silos.When it comes to the endpoint we’re talking about systems management and security management, but when it comes to cities we’re talking about public safety, water, transportation, weather, etc.Let’s say a natural disaster were to occur in a city, the Intelligent Operations Center would enable people to identify the impact on the key elements of city infrastructure (such as the water system), deploy first responders to the most critical sites and then help coordinate with hospitals to understand where there are open beds.

It’s admittedly a bit bleak to put these new capabilities in the context of a natural disaster, but it’s one of the few times when a whole city is called to respond.IBM is helping people to make better decisions in these moments. That said, natural disasters are certainly not the norm, and on a more routine basis you might find people using real-time analytics to avoid traffic on the drive home from work.

You also might feel a bit safer knowing that public safety will be one of the first three focus areas of the Intelligent Operations Center.IBM has been in the business of public safety for quite some time with our managed security services team.We’ve used video analytics technology to do everything from tactical implementations that might only require a handful of cameras, to citywide deployments in places like Chicago.

This week’s announcement will enable local, state, federal and nongovernmental authorities to harness the intelligence derived from analytics fed by sensors, crime data bases, cameras and integrated communications to make smarter and more timely decisions. Informed decisions that can make the difference in people’s daily lives.

IBM's Video Correlation and Analysis Suite can be integrated with the Intelligent Operations Center to enable rapid response to physical security events through the real-time and historical analysis of multiple video streams.Not only does IBM help authorities to respond more quickly to incidents, but we’re also improving the speed and accuracy of forensic analysis.